by DGR News Service | Nov 27, 2020 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
The Problem
by Lierre Keith
From the introduction to the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.
“You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you’re not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that’s going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.”
—Bill Ayers, cofounder of the Weather Underground.
A black tern weighs barely two ounces. On energy reserves less than a small bag of M&M’s and wings that stretch to cover twelve inches, she flies thousands of miles, searching for the wetlands that will harbor her young. Every year the journey gets longer as the wetlands are desiccated for human demands. Every year the tern, desperate and hungry, loses, while civilization, endless and sanguineous, wins.
A polar bear should weigh 650 pounds. Her energy reserves are meant to see her through nine long months of dark, denned gestation, and then lactation, when she will give up her dwindling stores to the needy mouths of her species’ future. But in some areas, the female’s weight before hibernation has already dropped from 650 to 507 pounds. Meanwhile, the ice has evaporated like the wetlands. When she wakes, the waters will stretch impassably open, and there is no Abrahamic god of bears to part them for her.
The Aldabra snail should weigh something, but all that’s left to weigh are skeletons, bits of orange and indigo shells. The snail has been declared not just extinct, but the first casualty of global warming. In dry periods, the snail hibernated. The young of any species are always more vulnerable, as they have no reserves from which to draw. In this case, the adults’ “reproductive success” was a “complete failure.” In plain terms, the babies died and kept dying, and a species millions of years old is now a pile of shell fragments.
What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair?
We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That’s 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.
There is a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene extinction event. There’s no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman’s excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We’ve all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears. Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong?
There are voices raised in concern, even anguish, at the plight of the earth, the rending of its species. “Only zero emissions can prevent a warmer planet,” one pair of climatologists declare. James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, states bluntly that global warming has passed the tipping point, carbon offsetting is a joke, and “individual lifestyle adjustments” are “a deluded fantasy.” It’s all true, and self-evident.
“Simple living” should start with simple observation: if burning fossil fuels will kill the planet, then stop burning them.
But that conclusion, in all its stark clarity, is not the popular one to draw. The moment policy makers and environmental groups start offering solutions is the exact moment when they stop telling the truth, inconvenient or otherwise. Google “global warming solutions.” The first paid sponsor, Campaign Earth, urges “No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? We’re here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success.” By “realistic” they don’t mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem. They mean the usual consumer choices—cloth shopping bags, travel mugs, and misguided dietary advice—which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive.
As Derrick has pointed out elsewhere, even if every American took every single action suggested by Al Gore it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent. Aric tells a stark truth: even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average American’s annual one ton of garbage production, “your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That’s thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste.”
Industrialism itself is what has to stop.
There is no kinder, greener version that will do the trick of leaving us a living planet. In blunt terms, industrialization is a process of taking entire communities of living beings and turning them into commodities and dead zones. Could it be done more “efficiently”? Sure, we could use a little less fossil fuels, but it still ends in the same wastelands of land, water, and sky. We could stretch this endgame out another twenty years, but the planet still dies. Trace every industrial artifact back to its source—which isn’t hard, as they all leave trails of blood—and you find the same devastation: mining, clear-cuts, dams, agriculture. And now tar sands, mountaintop removal, wind farms (which might better be called dead bird and bat farms).
No amount of renewables is going to make up for the fossil fuels or change the nature of the extraction, both of which are prerequisites for this way of life. Neither fossil fuels nor extracted substances will ever be sustainable; by definition, they will run out. Bringing a cloth shopping bag to the store, even if you walk there in your Global Warming Flip-Flops, will not stop the tar sands. But since these actions also won’t disrupt anyone’s life, they’re declared both realistic and successful.
The next site’s Take Action page includes the usual: buying light bulbs, inflating tires, filling dishwashers, shortening showers, and rearranging the deck chairs. It also offers the ever-crucial Global Warming Bracelets and, more importantly, Flip-Flops. Polar bears everywhere are weeping with relief.
The first noncommercial site is the Union of Concerned Scientists. As one might expect, there are no exclamation points, but instead a statement that “[t]he burning of fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) alone counts for about 75 percent of annual CO2 emissions.” This is followed by a list of Five Sensible Steps. Step One? No, not stop burning fossil fuels—“Make Better Cars and SUVs.” Never mind that the automobile itself is the pollution, with its demands—for space, for speed, for fuel—in complete opposition to the needs of both a viable human community and a living planet. Like all the others, the scientists refuse to call industrial civilization into question. We can have a living planet and the consumption that’s killing the planet, can’t we?
The principle here is very simple.
As Derrick has written, “[A]ny social system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition unsustainable.” Just to be clear, nonrenewable means it will eventually run out. Once you’ve grasped that intellectual complexity, you can move on to the next level. “Any culture based on the nonrenewable use of renewable resources is just as unsustainable.” Trees are renewable. But if we use them faster than they can grow, the forest will turn to desert. Which is precisely what civilization has been doing for its 10,000 year campaign, running through soil, rivers, and forests as well as metal, coal, and oil. Now the oceans are almost dead and their plankton populations are collapsing, populations that both feed the life of the oceans and create oxygen for the planet.
What will we fill our lungs with when they are gone? The plastics with which industrial civilization is replacing them? In parts of the Pacific, plastic outweighs plankton 48 to 1. Imagine if it were your blood, your heart, crammed with toxic materials—not just chemicals, but physical gunk—until there was ten times more of it than you. What metaphor is adequate for the dying plankton? Cancer? Suffocation? Crucifixion?
But the oceans don’t need our metaphors. They need action. They need industrial civilization to stop destroying and devouring. In other words, they need us to make it stop.
Which is why we are writing this book.
THE DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE BOOK
Strategy to Save the Planet:
https://deepgreenresistance.net/en/resistance/the-problem/the-problem/
by DGR News Service | Sep 8, 2020 | Human Supremacy, The Problem: Civilization
Ross Carter offers a critical review of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. He arguably enriches Naomi’s own assessment of the situation by adding a DGR analysis.
By Ross Carter
Using crisis as an opportunity to get rich
In her book, the Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein details a particular trope of modern capitalism. That of using and/or creating shock and disaster to advance its agenda. Like the majority of liberal literature this book left me with more questions than answers. For example, is it just capitalism that uses crises to advance? Was life amazing before neo-liberal capitalism came along? Are discussions about different shades of civilization a waste of time? Is this whole book a distraction? Although frustrating at times and limited in its perspective, the history mapped out in this book did still have a lot to offer and to ponder.
The Traumatised Traumatise
One thing I take home from this book is how modern Capitalism is civilization attempting to continue to function and sustain itself, while everything (eco-systems and social structures) collapse around it. Due to Naomi’s blind commitment to Democracy and liberalism this would not be a take home though without a mild awareness of the history of civilization, particularly how it has always depended upon war, colonisation, control of populaces (social structure, slavery, police, media, religion and law etc.), and environmental and technological expansion, to sustain a hold over humanity and the planet. Civilization has also always fed off of disaster. This can be clearly seen in the fact that although individual civilizations collapse, disasters in themselves, civilization itself has continued to spread across the planet eating up wildlife, including wild humans, in its path.
The story that Naomi tells is not an isolated story, it is one that has been going on in one form or another for as long as civilization has existed. The logic of Civilization is to protect itself at any cost, and that logic continues unabated. Without a deeper analysis you are stuck in the limited perspective that if only we could get rid of those horrible capitalists then everything would be ok. This is a naive over-simplification of the issues we face. It ignores the current and rapid murder of the planet by Industrial civilization.
It ignores the reality of the lives of passive desperation, the mental trauma, anguish and grief that humanity, as a whole, currently lives with.
Another lesson or reminder I took away from reading the book was how war and conflict is integral to civilization and its expansion and survival. All expansion (aka colonisation) has depended on violence and conflict and left destruction in its wake. Civilization in turn traumatises individuals, communities and cultures, then takes advantage of that trauma to grow and expand. This was true in Iraq in 2004 and it was true in Iraq (AKA the Fertile Crescent) in 6-8,000bc when one of the first civilizations is said to have formed/spread their leaving decimation and desert in its wake.
This needs repeating. The land that Iraq now sits on was being pillaged and destroyed by civilization 10,000 or so years ago. The language I am writing in, it is said, evolved out of the Middle Eastern languages of the time. The Shock Doctrine is part of a continuum. We, the civilized, are doing the same things now that civilized peoples were doing 10,000 years ago. Changing from neo-liberal capitalism to a more social capitalism, replacing oil wells with lithium and rare metal mines (for ‘green’ technologies), isn’t going to change anything. The Shock will continue until we do something about the problem at the core, civilization itself. Or until civilization reaches, what seems like an inevitable suicidal endgame. The almost complete end of life on this planet.
“I am not arguing that all forms of market systems are inherently violent” p20.
The Shock process that Naomi defines and recognises is at the core a continuation of colonialism. It is hyper-colonialism. It is a confirmation by those in power that they are in power and that they are willing to do anything to stay in power. It is an extra layer of colonialism. And therefore an extra layer of trauma and destruction. Competition is at the core of all civilized relationships and the civilized psyche itself. It is at the core of agricultural societies who fight each other and wild nature for the space to deforest and grow. It is at the core of modern civilization in all its teachings and all it upholds. Competition we are told is natural and good. We appear to have forgotten what is natural and good. We have seen no other path. We are conquerors and dominators. Takers. We do not know what it is to be human be-ings, only human war-ings. This is apparent in Naomi’s book.
From Chile to Iraq via New Orleans. The only direction we can go is towards increasing levels of control and dominance. Unless we change this mindset we will continue on this path indefinitely. Civilization can wear a facade of democracy or liberalism but it is merely that. A facade. Equality and co-operation are not possible in civilization. They are in direct contradiction to its inbuilt needs to expand and control.
Changing this mindset is an intense and thorough task, but it is the only one that will make a difference long term.
Joe Biden and solar panels are not going to cut it. Just as different leaders and more technology have never made a difference before. Only increased and sped up the expansion and control of civilization. There will be no simple solution or saviour. Our desperation to control and dominate from the White House and board room, to our patriarchal nuclear family, stems from the same place. Mass cultural trauma. As Naomi points out, a broken individual is easy to manipulate and control. And we are all broken by civilization. We are traumatised in the womb. We are traumatised in birth. We are born into generational trauma. We are traumatised within our dysfunctional families and social structures. We are traumatised by our ‘education’. We are traumatised by the boxes we are put in and the masks we have to wear. We are traumatised by pollution, by food, by technologies. Etc. Etc.
The traumatised mind is a warring and competing mind. It is one that cannot be satiated. Civilization commodifies and others us. It turns us into objects and roles. Slave, farmer, chief, wife, husband, etc. THAT is shock and awe. The shock that Naomi defines is an interesting story and one worth hearing, but it is also an addendum, and like all leftist analysis it ignores or denies the rest of the book. It ignores what led to that addendum. If we continue not to see how violence and (our own) trauma and shock are integral to the establishment and sustenance of civilization, not just neo-liberal capitalism, then our solutions and actions, like all leftist/liberal solutions, are going to achieve absolutely zero when facing the bigger picture of the murder and enslavement of the planet and of ALL life on it by civilization.
Our blindness to reality is related to our mass trauma, perpetuated by our education system and media.
The media are masters of shock. Naomi points out how the military targeted certain industries in Iraq to increase the shock to the populace. Just as important was the taking over of the media. Of the stories being told to the Iraqi people. The media pacifies through dumbing populations down, through fear mongering, and simply through lying or covering up the truth, It is quite amusing but also sad to note that Naomi, and all of her other liberal pals, are suffering from the very symptoms she herself defines. That of a forgetting. A cultural amnesia. A reconditioning, brainwashing (let’s call it what it is). Let’s not forget that liberals are traumatised too.
One only needs some basic understanding of the history of civilization to know that at its core since its inception it has depended on slavery (by the whip or by economic/cultural control), genocide, ecocide and colonisation. This is completely ignored though. Why? Why would liberals continue to preach for, and believe in, those very things which are used to oppress them? The Green New Deal and Democracy aren’t going to remove the shock to the system that living hollowed out lives on a hollowed out planet perpetually puts us through. Yet they are worshipped. How could you read this 533 page book, in your break at the office, or sitting in your city apartment, the sound of sirens and cars droning around you, smell of pollution in the air, zero wildlife, about how capitalism uses shock to further its agenda, and not recognise the shock, all around you and within you? The obvious answer is that liberals have been shocked themselves.
We have all been shocked.
Then in this lost, disconnected state we are all susceptible to the easy solutions of religion, gurus, demagogues and techno-fixes. We are all malleable. People do not willingly hand over their personal power and autonomy and that of their community, to civilization, unless they have first been broken as a human and built up again as a citizen. We will only really be able to think clearly and connect to one another and the earth again once we throw off the myths that civilization holds us down with. Once we, as individuals and communities, destroy civilization as a concept and a physical system. For it is only beyond civilization that we can really be free from continued shock and perpetual disaster.
Ross Carter is a sytems thinker, critic and DGR guardian based in the UK.
by DGR News Service | Jun 28, 2020 | The Problem: Civilization
This piece, originally published on 5th June 2020, calls on us to reject so-called “green technology” as a false solution and instead organize for revolution against industrial civilization. It has been edited for publication here. Join the conversation in the comments.
Green Energy vs. Wild Nature
by Jorge Clúni/Medium
The documentary “Planet of the Humans” generated a lot of criticism. This contributed to its removal on the 25th of May from YouTube over a four-second copyright infringement.
“Renewable energy isn’t perfect,” they all say, “but it’s an improvement over the fossil-fuels now being used.” These thoroughly civilized writers share the desire to continue techno-industrial society, thus missing the core problem of Technology.
Each of them writes with the assumption of a need for continued electrical power, forgetting that electricity is very recent in human existence and unnecessary for human life. Electricity is severely detrimental to the proliferation of wild Nature, of which humans are but one species.
So honed-in to defending renewable energy’s “efficiency” and affordability are the film’s detractors, they do not ‘see the woods for the trees’. Cathy Cowan Becker’s rebuke of the film is one of the better critiques, but through all its numerous citations of the documentary’s supposed statistical errors it really amounts only to having found some typos.
The main point consistently being missed, writes the film’s director Jeff Gibbs (responding to claims of “old data”), is that “solar, wind, and electric technologies are not something separate from a giant fossil-fuel based industrial civilization; they are one and the same.” The critics miss this point. Technologies are burning polluting fuels and fouling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Other technologies also cause harm.
The essential problem is that technology always comes to exist in exchange for a sacrifice of wild Nature. It always has unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences which inevitably impinge upon naturally-occurring freedoms for humans and non-humans. Even a superficial look over the history of technological advancement reveals precisely this. This holds true for the ‘green energy tech’. As noted by Becker, the closing scenes of the documentary show orangutan-habitat destruction due to industrial scale food manufacturing. This atrocity which will only be remedied through a dramatic decline in the demand for and production of civilized-manufactured foods; by the collapse of industrial civilization.
The degree to which we face, accept and embrace the collapse of civilization, regardless of the hardships it may entail, demonstrates the degree of our love for (and defence of) wild Nature.
In hopes of impeding rampant consumption of our Earth, Becker puts forth five common economist-suggested assessments of growth and success, but each of these trite suggestions are undeniably vague: “good jobs, well-being, environment, fairness, and health”. They can all be judged subjectively (as met or unmet), so they’re useless.
Like the wise who pull out the roots rather than hack the branches (paraphrasing H.D. Thoreau), we must aim efforts on one grand goal – that is, saving Nature beyond human control — even if it isn’t as easily achieved as less-effective alternatives we might be allowed to enact (e.g., minimal pollution regulations, the Green New Deal, subsidized contraceptives, et cetera). That goal should be the forced collapse of the worldwide industrial-technological system (industrial civilization) which creates the problems plaguing us. That is the only single goal which will adequately resolve our dilemma.
Socialism alone is no answer.
The control of a governing class in Cuba, China, and Bolivarian Venezuela are provided at the sacrifice of wild Nature and by human’s dissociation from Her. Cuba imports oil for the same reason that Venezuela pumps and burns and exports its own crude reserves, which is to — at best — deliver a better quality of civilized (read: unnatural, subordinated) life.
Mao’s ‘Four Pests’ extermination campaign was explicitly designed to improve living for China’s assimilated humans at the expense of the non-human “pests”. The government’s horrendous South-North water re-routing project might ‘benefit’ 100M people by diverting 44.8 billion cubic meters of water, but only at the expense of non-humans who will henceforth be deprived of the pre-existing natural waterflow.
You can’t make a techno-industrial-power and economic-growth omelette without breaking Nature.
Capitalism is clearly incompatible with the continuation of wild Nature; copper, gold and lithium are taken from Nature, and can land be seized and converted to allow palm oil or chocolate or beef to be grown?
This does not mean that alternative economic systems which perpetuate a reliance upon (or subservience to) industrial technology will abandon the game of amassing technological power and instead let Nature thrive, uncontrolled and wild: Whatever else can be said of the self-proclaimed socialist nations, they are indisputably seeking economic growth just as much as the capitalist countries, the very concept being predicated upon the transformation of free Nature into uses designated exclusively for Civilized humans.
Everyone knows that a better material “standard of living” as judged by Civilized measures is not provided when people live freely to engage with Nature, beyond civilization’s economics, foraging and hunting so long as they and their tribes are capable of it — and dying without immediate high-tech medical interventions, too. Rather, technology demands that Nature must be conformed and adjusted and as reward for this civilized people will be given more damaging comforts and detrimental conveniences: indoor plumbing, heating and cooling, refrigeration, rapid long-distance transportation, “healthcare” (to repair the body of the most apparent damages caused by civilization). Benjamin Franklin noted in 1753 that the natives don’t seem to prefer civilization, and even his fellow Whites who’d been among the Indians were more inclined to return to them after being ‘rescued’ — an odd reality to reconcile with the notion of its improving living conditions.
Living in Balance
The occasional lack of food for humans in any region is just one of the realities of life on Earth.
It isn’t unfair or unjust when there is a drought, or when the large game animals move, and a tribe no longer has food in that area and has to migrate. That doesn’t harm our entire species, though agricultural food has indeed hurt human health, just as its land takeovers eradicate entire species. Nor is it a tragedy or insufferable cruelty when conditions don’t allow for menstruation or offspring-conception or infant-nursing. It is simply the law of the land, something which all other creatures experience when being provided-for by Nature — and also being limited by it.
To live this way, accepting the good and also the bad, would be humanity living among and with Nature, not exceptional, nor beyond its ways of operating. Ending the techno-industrial system will take the modern agricultural system with it — thereby mostly re-wilding the biosphere and freeing most of an imprisoned Nature.
To sustain oneself on fresh forage and local wild game is the healthiest diet we can have, and the mental dexterity and physical exertion required easily surpasses the routine, apportioned exercising performed at a gym. One can look to numerous beneficial facets of the nomadic forager-hunter lifestyle in contrast to the detriment of sedentary city-dwelling, even in the earliest days of agrarian culture.
While clans living in Nature are indeed subject to the caprices of “the gods” or the chance (mis)fortunes of natural weather (and simple bad luck) they are not subjected to market fluctuations depriving them of a meal, nor do they suffer from faraway chain-of-supply disruptions, as we in Civilization are burdened with. With ‘only’ 10,000–12,000 years of full-time agriculture delivering constant food surplus, we’ve managed to transform the Earth. Hasn’t it been long enough now, don’t we have 20/20 hindsight to see that it isn’t working?
For all our years of constantly feeding people we keep generating more people, Do we want to undertake yet another intervention and set about altering that ancient, deeply-embedded natural inclination to have children rather than simply end the relatively far more recent means by which we produce food surpluses to yield global population growth (and deforestation)?
Power Plants and Destruction
Becker mentions legal requirements of environmental-impact review for any proposed new power plant; of course, even if nothing bad ever resulted at any places given approval, it is inconceivable that any agency would rule the majority of power plants detrimental to their local environs and order them shuttered — the nation’s electricity-generating simply won’t be ended without a revolutionary movement to force it, because the technological system demands that electrical power be delivered, regardless of the consequences to Nature (and people).
Moreover, the laws today can (and do) change tomorrow. It seems like every year of this President has generated an outcry about his nullifying EPA regulations which were enacted under the last President. Do we continue to gamble the future of humanity and all the rest of Nature on reversible legal policies? Any policy which restricts a specific technological means will eventually break under the push of technology overall; for permanent prevention of damaging technological impacts, the technical ability must be totally removed from existence. This is one reason why coal has not disappeared, though market forces in some areas have diminished its appeal (profitability).
All the frequent mentions by ‘green tech’ cheerleaders that coal plants are closing in the USA or Europe give the false impression that coal will no longer be torn from Earth and burned; in reality, it’s being sold by everyone to anyone who’ll buy it, providing “economic growth” and “increased standard of living” in exchange for its usage, definitely polluting the air and adding mercury to the oceans and undoubtedly increasing their rate of material consumption (as mentioned earlier), but only potentially (and not evidently) diminishing their population growth.
Renewable Energy Doesn’t Displace Fossil Fuels
Effectively, renewables simply add a non-emitting source for electrical power rather than replace any existing fuels.
While there is a baseless hope, or a theory or prediction, that wind- and solar-generated energy will supplant the dirty fuels presently used most, there is absolutely no guarantee of this; were it to happen, it would be contrary to all history of industrial fuels: the access to crude oil (and later refined diesel) did not end the usage of coal, nor did the utilization of oil and gasoline prevent the development of uses for and extraction of natural gas. (Similarly, natural materials which had little utility decades ago have since been put to industrial uses and so are now valued, resulting in the increased destruction or alteration of vast swaths of wild Nature in order to obtain those resource deposits.)
So not only has techno-industrial society sought out and laid claim to all available coal, oil, and natural gas accessible beneath our planet’s surface, but now it wants to take the sunlight which lands on the surface and the wind which flows over it, too. Was it forgotten that evolved organisms currently utilize the sunlight which falls on them, or do these non-humans not matter if consideration of them limits Civilization staying electrified?
Electricity and expendable fuel consumption has gotten more efficient, but has electricity demand ever diminished in all the time of transition between different fuels? Of course not, and the Jevons Paradox informs us that efficiency increases always bring consumption increases.
That ‘renewables’ are becoming cheaper and renewable-powered machines more efficient may sound good, but the only real limit on consumption is imposed by price. If solar energy is generated for at least one-third of every day, and wind the same, and it’s incredibly cheap because it’s unlimited, its use will inevitably be maximized, not only by individuals leaving the lights or A/C running but also with flying and driving all around the planet. The problems of this inhuman technological movement and the land-contouring it brings (and largely requires) go far beyond its levels of CO2 released now, but the prevailing thought would be “Well it’s not polluting” or “But it’s not costing us”, or “At least it’s not fossil-fuel powered”.
Power Corrupts
Let’s disregard the horrible things that industry and government would do with limitless, non-polluting electrical energy.
Even still, residential and individuals’ uses of electricity are incidental to power plants’ generation of it; industrial demand exceeds residential by magnitudes, and is in fact the reason power plants are operated. If renewables can actually provide for all present residential use, the demand will not cease at this present level. And what will fuel industry’s demand? Hydrocarbons while they are available, but further development and deployment of the renewable-energy technologies would go on, because the addicted are never sated.
Even if that entails ‘only’ more solar panels and windmills and no further use of coal, gas, or oil, the ‘green tech’ would be interrupting the natural flow and fall of wind and sunlight upon our Earth, a characteristic of life here conservatively estimated at billions of years old. Is that audacious, hubristic entitlement of Civilization not shameful, and potentially (if not probably or obviously) perilous? Some critics of the documentary falsely claim that the film advocates fossil fuels, while others bemoan that it gives the fossil-fuels industry ‘ammunition’.
With only a bit of checking we can see the true priorities of the film’s attackers. For example, Ketan Joshi’s website reveals his bona fides for discussing ‘renewable energy’ — disqualifications to any claims of being out to save Nature: “I did a science degree at Sydney University, and since I was a teenager I’ve loved science, technology, philosophy and psychology. I worked in the renewable energy industry for about eight years…”
While his page greets visitors with a picture of a robot, he does not at all mention a love for wild Nature, only his work for the (oxymoronic) ‘green tech’ industry, which has gone from professional to pro bono. In any case, it doesn’t indicate a loss of ethics or giving aid to the hydrocarbon industry to agree with Exxon that 2+2=4, it is merely an undeniable truth to be recognized by all parties; to cite some promotion of the film by fossil-fuel loyalists is simply casting the shadow of a bogeyman in order to darken a truth which ought to be recognized by opponents.
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex
If we only scratch the surface of why the hydrocarbons defenders might advance this film which critiques ‘green energy’, we can see how their view actually aligns with the criticism of the documentary by prominent professional ‘green’ leaders.
At best, the environmentalists reveal that they agree with the point being made by the Oil, Coal, & Gas lobbyists who say, “If solar and wind won’t do any better, you might as well stick with what you’ve got — you certainly don’t want to give up electricity!”
This is precisely what liberals like Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and Josh Fox are all worried about,that people will so value the maddening and addictive technological garbage of the modern era that they will simply settle for baking the planet to death. But not only do humans not need any of the electrified stuff we daily engage with, it actually worsens our lives, dividing us from connecting with Nature and even other people, physically, face-to-face, in-person.
For 200,000 years humans just like us lived in small groups, deeply connected to their people, relying upon and aiding their fellows, competing against outsiders (thus giving each one well-balanced traits for making allies and facing enemies, ensuring security and confronting threats, developing wholly with both offense and defense ).
Yet, only 220 years after the first use of electric power, most people who think themselves environmentalists are now debating whether the use of windmills or solar panels can suffice for providing enough electricity (an unnecessary extravagance) to make it worthwhile to stop using fossil fuels and thereby avoid destroying our only lifeboat in the sea of the entire Milky Way. And when the insanity of that is challenged, when “Planet of the Humans” says we need to pull the needle out and clean up, get sober and face reality, the reaction is to shout down the messenger.
Infinite Electricity
Think about what would be done with infinite electricity, based on what has been and is now being done already.
We need to have electricity (without the CO2) so that video games and “binge watching” can continue? So that aerial drones (for surveillance or assassinations) don’t need to land for refueling? So that cyber-bullying and fake news and child porn can proliferate despite all controls attempted?
If this is raising the ‘standard of living’, why do we have so many unhappy people who kill themselves (and, increasingly, others before themselves)? The 40,000 annual suicides in America are surely only a fraction of all the people miserably unsatisfied by life in fast-paced techno-industrial civilization who don’t succeed in attempting to end their lives; how many more are medicated into accepting their discontentment? When will we reclaim our dignity as a species that survived for at least a couple hundred millennia but are clearly unable to cope with modern conditions, and also blind or hopeless to altering them?
People existing in Nature rarely become so miserable and seek to end their lives. This is a unique attribute of the civilized. Facing challenges and working diligently to overcome adversities is rewarding and builds confidence, just as it provides its own intrinsic value to people.
Civilization is what the renowned Desmond Morris referred to as “The Human Zoo” with the title of his 1969 book.
Simply imagine for a minute, eating only the foods our species is adapted to, which you (or a close friend who lives among you) have obtained, and being with your children; imagine children of all ages playing together, each of them acquiring every skill and material item they need to live well, simply from being in the suitable natural environs to which they are adapted, and being around their parents and emulating them; imagine getting intimately acquainted with your bioregion, not being crowded like industrial-agriculture’s chicken in a growing-warehouse.
Imagine being free from the psychological toll of potential annihilation via nuclear conflict, being free of worries over the forecast of (induced) sea-level rise, or not suffering a tech-facilitated viral contagion greatly worsened by heavily-polluted air (not merely the ‘greenhouse gases’).
Imagine shedding the burden of existential crisis because we actually stop the worsening potentials of Technology, which grows more autonomous by the day due to the vile works of lauded scientists and technicians.
Modern Existential Fear
Even those involved in Technology’s advance are seriously worried about it, but feel powerless to stop it, because they will not look to revolution which is required. And for being milquetoast and servile to the technological system, Bill McKibben, a most prominent advocate of renewable energy, gets to soak up the limelight and be heralded as an environmentalist leader. He often has grand platforms (Rolling Stone, frequently, and recently “60 Minutes”) to extol the talking points of the Green Energy industry (for which he volunteers), in addition to deflecting valid criticisms which might otherwise awaken sincere but misdirected people.
Were he to take a more oppositional, or boldly confrontational position against the menace of further technological progress. McKibben would be marginalized and replaced by another figurehead for false hopes of a techno-salvation to come. McKibben — who on May 6th, 2020 declared that one of rural America’s biggest problems is a lack of consistent and reliable WiFi signals — measures quite poorly against even the timid academic-philosopher class who at least named the enemy as Technology itself: Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, Chellis Glendinning; while none of them were brave enough to unequivocally state that only a revolutionary movement will be able to depose technoindustrial civilization and free all the inhabitants of Earth from the controls imposed by Technology, at the very least they recognized the primary source of the problem.
This documentary also does so, in the seventeenth minute, when its director’s narration rhetorically asks:
“Is it possible for machines built by industrial civilization to save us from industrial civilization?”
Only if they are used disruptively, against the continuation of techno-industrial mass-society and to allow the revival of wild Nature.
The Green “Misleadership” Class
The so-called ‘green leadership’ offered within technological society will never point attention at industrial civilization itself. The cabal of professional ‘Greens’ primarily act as steam-valves to relieve any serious tension or resentment against technology, a sentiment which has constantly increased due to the knowledge — both reported and personally felt — of the ever-worsening destruction of Nature, in addition to the misery of modern humans enduring techno-industrial society.
“The idea that societies could collectively decide to embrace rapid foundational changes to transportation, housing, energy, agriculture, forestry, and more — precisely what is needed to avert climate breakdown — is not something for which most of us have any living reference.” — Naomi Klein, April 2019
When she wrote those words, Klein had in mind merely that a popular movement be developed to press for enactment of legislation which is itself only vaguely imagined by the Green New Deal resolution of the US House of Representatives. She was not thinking of revolutionary action, which is never advanced by a mass of millions, nor the revolutionary sentiment which can’t be satisfied with legislative appeasement from the existing powers.
Naomi Klein is not a revolutionary, not in spirit or thought. If we are to save the wonderful spirit of free and wild Nature, that caretaker of all beings on Earth, we need to understand that the green leaders put forth by the technological system are the most reactionary and conservative of environmentalists to be found. Their prominence serves as misdirection for those who are truly fed-up with the killing of Nature, those who live with and deeply love the land they are acquainted with, those unwilling to watch the natural world be sacrificed for the sake of civilized greed.
Rather than putting hopes and prayers into some new technology which might deliver the ‘Diet Coke’ fix for techno-industrial society — that is, all the same “great” benefits with none of the currently-known downsides — we need only hopeful optimism that our commitment and effort can make successful a revolution against the technological system. Indeed, while many a Leftist is inherently a pessimist, defeated before they even begin, truly the only reason that revolution seems not to be possible is that it is not thought to be possible.
When people stop awaiting a savior (whether man or machine) and begin to see and believe that revolution can indeed be undertaken and achieved, then in reality it can be.
by DGR News Service | May 23, 2020 | Movement Building & Support
This excerpt is from Derrick Jensen’s unpublished book “The Politics of Violation.” It has been edited slightly for publication here. The book is in need of a publisher. Please contact us if you wish to speak with Derrick about this.
By Derrick Jensen
For more than two thousand years, a war has been waged over the soul and direction of anarchism.
On one hand, there are those who understand the straightforward and obvious premises that at least to me form the foundation of anarchism: that governments exist in great measure to serve the interests of the governors and others of their class; and that we in our communities are capable of governing ourselves.
And on the other hand, there are those who argue that all constraints on their own behavior are oppressive, and so for whom the point of anarchism is to remove all of these constraints.
I researched and wrote this book in an attempt to understand this war, in the hope that understanding this war can help us understand how and why anarchism has become a haven for so much behavior that is community- and movement-destroying; how and why a movement claiming to show that humans are capable of self-governance so often seems to do everything it can to show the opposite; how and why a movement that claims to be about ending all forms of oppression can be so full of bullying, abuse, and misogyny.
If we all understand this, might we as a society move both anarchism and the larger culture away from these behaviors and toward more sane and sustainable communities?
It became clear to me, however, that the book is about more than anarchism. In part it’s about differences between understanding and learning from a political philosophy—any political philosophy—and turning that philosophy into an identity; what happens when the former ossifies into the latter. This is a problem not just in anarchism but in more or less all philosophies.
When Harm is Left Unchecked
A strength of anarchism is that many anarchists are willing to struggle for their beliefs, and to fight power head on. A weakness is that too many anarchists are too often not strategic, tactical, or moral in choosing their fights, including how they will fight, and in choosing the targets of their attacks.
Severino di Giovanni provides a great example from the 1930s. He was an anarchist in Argentina who started a bombing campaign targeting fascists and also, because of the killings of Sacco and Vanzetti, bombing targets associated with the United States. We can argue over whether his actions were appropriate. And the anarchists in Argentina certainly did argue over it, which leads to why I bring him up: one of the anarchists who spoke against his bombing campaign (saying it would lead to a right wing coup, which in fact happened soon after) was murdered.
Guess who was the prime suspect in his murder?
…
I could provide hundreds of examples of atrocious behavior that have become normalized among too many anarchists. For that matter I could provide hundreds of examples that have happened to me, from threats of death and other physical violence to the posting to the internet of pictures of me Photoshopped to simulate bestiality. Probably the most telling action has been that anarchists arranged for my elderly, disabled, functionally-blind mother to receive harassing phone calls every fifteen minutes from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. for weeks on end.
The point isn’t that they did this to me (and my mother): I’ve known too many people who’ve received their own version of this treatment.
Part of the point is that some people are terrible human beings. Change a few details, and anyone could tell similar stories from most other movements or organizations. And so this book becomes a case study of some of the harm terrible human beings can, if left unchecked, do to movements.
So, generically: What sorts of terrible people does your movement/organization support? And what harms do these people cause? Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak has written extensively on social change movements, and has talked about how abusive behavior drives away people, especially women, in “huge numbers. That’s a brain- and talent-drain these movements cannot afford.”
What can we do about that?
An Insult to One is Injury To All
Here’s another example of the sort of community-destroying behavior that has come to characterize too much anarchism. A few years ago, I was discovered by the Glenn Beck arm of the right wing. Within two weeks I’d received literally hundreds of death threats from them, many of which were highly detailed in what was to be done to me (e.g., photos of castration) and in information about where I live, my schedule, and so on. In response to these threats I bought a gun and installed bars over my doors and windows. I also called the police and the FBI. I didn’t believe the police and FBI would be particularly helpful (they weren’t), but I wanted for there to be an official record of the threats for two reasons. The first is that on the remote chance someone did kill or injure me, people would at least have an idea where to start looking for the perpetrators. The second is that if someone attempted to harm me and I had to use lethal force to protect myself, it would already be a matter of public record that I had reason to fear for my life. I could imagine a court scene playing out after I was charged with murder for killing someone who had attempted to kill me.[1]
The prosecuting attorney asks, “Were you afraid for your life?”
“Yes.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
A long silence while I consider that it wouldn’t be particularly useful to say I didn’t call the police because to do so is evidently against anarchist ideology.
The prosecuting attorney continues, “Then I guess you weren’t very afraid, were you?”
Trial over. I lose.
The point is that when I told my neighbors I’d received death threats, they responded as you’d expect decent human beings to respond—with sympathy and expressions of concern for my safety. Some took tangible steps to help guarantee this safety. For crying out loud, a member of the local Tea Party helped me install the bars. This is what members of a community do. An insult to one is an injury to all, remember?
On the other hand, with few exceptions I received little positive support from anarchists, who instead accused me of making up the threats, called me a coward for paying attention to them (many of these particular comments were, ironically enough, anonymous), threatened to kill me themselves, or excoriated me for calling the police.[2] Anarchists quickly labeled me a “cop lover,” then “pig fucker,” then “snitch,” then “someone who rats out comrades.” Soon, anarchists were accusing me of “regularly working with the FBI and the police,” and of being a “paid police informer.” It wasn’t long before some were saying, “Word on the street is that he’s been a fed from the beginning. They wrote all his books.”
To Distort is To Control
How does a political philosophy that leads people to act as did those young men I described who became bodyguards for the victim of a sexual assault lead others to act so despicably? How can anarchism be so easily and forcefully used, as it has been, as an excuse for men to sexually or otherwise physically assault women? How can anarchism be so easily and forcefully used to support, as we’ll see, the sexual abuse of children? And how can we prevent all of this from happening in the future?
Can anarchism be fixed?
We should ask these questions of every social movement. This questioning is especially important for those who are inside these movements.
Change a few words, and this book could have been written about almost any social movement or group. I know female Christians (now former Christians) who’ve been sexually assaulted by male Christians, and then pressured by the Christian community not to go to the police because to do so would supposedly harm their community.
I know female soldiers (now ex-military) who’ve been sexually assaulted by male soldiers, and then pressured by the military community not to go to the police because to do so would supposedly harm their community.
I know female athletes (now former athletes) who’ve been sexually assaulted by male athletes, and then pressured by the local athletic community not to go to the police because to do so would supposedly harm their community.
I know female police officers (now former ones) who’ve been sexually assaulted by male police officers, and then pressured by the local police community not to go to the police (!!) because to do so would supposedly harm their community.
Substitute the words musicians, teachers, loggers, environmental activists, actors, writers, and the story is the same.
So this book provides an exploration of what rape culture does to movements, and how movements are deformed or destroyed by the imperative to violate that is central to patriarchy, central to the dominant culture.
I’ve long been a critic of Christianity, but I can’t tell you how many times, especially when I used to drive beaters (I bought four cars in a row for one dollar each, and considered these good deals since the cars must have been worth at least twice that much), that I’ve been stuck by a road, and the person who stops to help fix my car has been a Christian stranger, motivated by a calling to do good in the name of their belief system. Yet, Christianity has been and still is used to justify—and leads to—atrocious behavior such as gynocide, genocide, ecocide. When I think of Christians, I think of a wonderfully kind man and woman who invited me into their home when I was living in my truck in my twenties. And when I think of Christians I think of misogynistic, racist, pro-imperialist buffoons. I think of Christians rationalizing slavery, rationalizing capitalism. I think of Christians burning women they considered witches, burning Native Americans, burning the world. I think of Christians burning other Christians. How does a religion that leads to wonderful people like the couple who gave me a place to stay also lead to such routinely atrocious behavior?
Likewise, when I think of the American Indian Movement, I think of brave women and men standing up to the United States government and to corrupt tribal governments. And I think of misogynist murdering assholes raping and killing Anna Mae Aquash, among others.
When I think of the Black Panthers I think of free breakfast programs for children and black pride and protecting neighborhoods from police violence. And I think of systematic programs of rape by male Panthers against women both black and white.
I’m sure you can find your own examples.
What is wrong with these movements?
Justifying Oppression
Obviously, anarchism is not the only philosophy that has been used to rationalize or facilitate the sexual exploitation of women. We’d be hard-pressed to find philosophies within patriarchy that haven’t. And certainly, groups other than anarchists have facilitated this exploitation. Organizations from the police to the courts to the military to churches to universities to professional sports organizations to the NCAA to the music industry to the Boy Scouts to pretty much you-name-it have facilitated or covered up sexual assaults by men on women or children.
Those of us who care about stopping atrocities need to ask: How does any particular philosophy justify or otherwise facilitate atrocious behavior? And what are we going to do to stop these atrocities?
Panem et Circenses
I became interested in anarchism when I first became politicized—that is, when I began to understand that, as economists are so fond of saying and even more fond of then ignoring, there is no free lunch. In other words, all rhetoric and rationalization aside, the wealth of some comes at the expense of others.
In other words, empires require colonies.
It immediately became clear to me that while much of how a state disperses resources (e.g., time and money) could be perceived as citizen maintenance,[3]—or, with thanks to Juvenal, providing enough “bread and circuses” to keep the exploited from tearing out the throats of the rich—the state’s most important function by far, and the primary reason for its existence, is to take care of business; that is, to take care of the interests of those in power.
Burden of Proof
So there’s a sense in which the bad behavior of too many anarchists is not only appalling but tragic, Bad behavior among anarchists represents thousands of years of lost opportunity for meaningful social change, because while some anarchist analysis makes sense, the behavior of too many of those who call themselves anarchists can get in the way of people wanting to share a movement with them.
The sensible analysis begins with this: The state isn’t necessary for human survival, and in fact the state primarily serves the interests of the governors and others of their class.
If you don’t believe governments primarily serve the interests of the governing class, ask yourself if you believe governments take better care of human beings, or of corporations. If governments had as their primary function the protection of human and nonhuman communities, would they devise a tool—the corporation—that exists explicitly to privatize profits and externalize costs, that is, to funnel wealth to the already wealthy at the expense of others? I’ve asked tens of thousands of people all over the United States and Canada if they believe governments better serve humans or corporations, and no one ever says humans.
Let’s throw in a couple more common-sense comments about anarchism. The first is by the American linguist, philosopher, scientist and activist Noam Chomsky (who, by the way, is also hated by many of the anarchists on the wrong side of the war for the soul of anarchism, who call him “a pussy” and “the old turd”): “That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met. Sometimes the burden can be met. If I’m taking a walk with my grandchildren and they dart out into a busy street, I will use not only authority but also physical coercion to stop them. The act should be challenged, but I think it can readily meet the challenge. And there are other cases; life is a complex affair, we understand very little about humans and society, and grand pronouncements are generally more a source of harm than of benefit. But the perspective is a valid one, I think, and can lead us quite a long way.”[4]
Makes sense, right?
Now let’s throw in another, by Edward Abbey: “Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”[5]
This all seems pretty obvious, and leads to the question, why aren’t more people anarchists?
[1] And most of us have read accounts of this sort of thing, for example, so many of the women in prison for killing their abusive husbands. In the town where I live a woman is right now being charged with murder for shooting her husband in front of witnesses who all swear that he routinely beat her, that this night he was punching and kicking her, and just before she shot him he yanked her by her hair out of a car as she was attempting to escape. Even the dead man’s mother is begging prosecutors to drop the charges.
[2] This whole question of never speaking to the police cuts to the heart of one of the problems with too much anarchism. Just as with any rigidified ideology, the ideology itself comes to supplant circumstance and common sense. For example, when attorneys advise you never to talk to the police, they mean when you’re under suspicion, not under every circumstance. If anarchists saw Ted Bundy knock out a woman, load her into his car, then drive off, they wouldn’t call the cops? What are they going to do, hop on their bikes and pedal after him?
[3] Such as providing water and waste disposal for the people. But the fact is agriculture and industry account for more than 90 percent of human water usage and 97 percent of waste production. Governments “take care of” big business under the guise of “citizen maintenance.”
[4] Doyle, Kevin, “Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Marxism, and Hope for the Future,” Red and Black Review, 1995, http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html – Site visited 6/20/2016.
[5] Abbey, Edward, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1990.
Featured image: 1873 painting of Diogenes, an ancient Greek Cynic and prominent figure in proto-anarchism. By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
About the Author
Derrick Jensen is a co-author of Deep Green Resistance, and the author of Endgame, The Culture of Make Believe, A Language Older than Words, and many other books. He was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” and won the Eric Hoffer Award in 2008. He has written for Orion, Audubon, and The Sun Magazine, among many others.
by DGR News Service | May 12, 2020 | Defensive Violence, Movement Building & Support
In this excerpt from his book Endgame: The Problem of Civilization, author Derrick Jensen explores how limited the English language is when considering different aspects of “violence.”
By Derrick Jensen
I do think we need more words in English for violence.
It’s absurd that the same word is used to describe someone raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing a child; and someone stopping that perpetrator by shooting him in the head.
The same word used to describe a mountain lion killing a deer by one quick bite to the spinal column is used to describe a civilized human playing smackyface with a suspect’s child, or vaporizing a family with a daisy cutter.
The same word often used to describe breaking a window is used to describe killing a CEO and used to describe that CEO producing toxins that give people cancer the world over.
Check that: the latter isn’t called violence, it’s called production.
Sometimes people say to me they’re against all forms of violence. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a pacifist activist who said, “Violence never accomplishes anything, and besides, it’s really stupid.”
I asked, “What types of violence are you against?”
“All types.”
“How do you eat? And do you defecate? From the perspective of carrots and intestinal flora, respectively, those actions are very violent.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
Actually I didn’t. The definitions of violence we normally use are impossibly squishy, especially for such an emotionally laden, morally charged, existentially vital, and politically important word. This squishiness makes our discourse surrounding violence even more meaningless than it would otherwise be, which is saying a lot.
The conversation with the pacifist really got me thinking, first about definitions of violence, and second about categories. So far as the former, there are those who point out, rightly, the relationship between the words violence and violate, and say that because a mountain lion isn’t violating a deer but simply killing the deer to eat, that this would not actually be violence. Similarly a human who killed a deer would not be committing an act of violence, so long as the predator, in this case the human, did not violate the fundamental predator/prey relationship: in other words, so long as the predator then assumed responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community.
The violation, and thus violence, would come only with the breaking of that bond. I like that definition a lot.
Here’s another definition I like, for different reasons: “An act of violence would be any act that inflicts physical or psychological harm on another.”I like this one because its inclusiveness reminds us of the ubiquity of violence, and thus I think demystifies violence a bit. So, you say you oppose violence? Well, in that case you oppose life. You oppose all change. The important question becomes:
What types of violence do you oppose?
Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking about: categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit ad hoc, we can pretty easily break violence into different types. There is, for example, the distinction between unintentional and intentional violence: the difference between accidentally stepping on a snail and doing so on purpose. Then there would be the category of unintentional but fully expected violence: whenever I drive a car I can fully expect to smash insects on the windshield (to kill this or that particular moth is an accident, but the deaths of some moths are inevitable considering what I’m doing).
There would be the distinction between direct violence, that I do myself, and violence that I order done.
Presumably, George W. Bush hasn’t personally throttled any Iraqi children, but he has ordered their deaths by ordering an invasion of their country (the death of this or that Iraqi child may be an accident, but the deaths of some children are inevitable considering what he is ordering to be done). Another kind of violence would be systematic, and therefore often hidden: I’ve long known that the manufacture of the hard drive on my computer is an extremely toxic process, and gives cancer to women in Thailand and elsewhere who assemble them, but until today I didn’t know that the manufacture of the average computer takes about two tons of raw materials (520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,600 pounds of water; 4 pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals and 70 pounds of water are used to make just a single two gram memory chip). My purchase of the computer carries with it those hidden forms of violence.
There is also violence by omission:
By not following the example of Georg Elser and attempting to remove Hitler, good Germans were culpable for the effects Hitler had on the world. By not removing dams I am culpable for their effects on my landbase.
There is violence by silence.
I will tell you something I did, or rather didn’t do, that causes me more shame than almost anything I have ever done or not done in my life. I was walking one night several years ago out of a grocery store. A man who was clearly homeless and just as clearly alcoholic (and inebriated) approached me and asked for money. I told him, honestly, that I had no change. He respectfully thanked me anyway, and wished me a good evening. I walked on. I heard the man say something to whomever was behind me. Then I heard another man’s voice say, “Get the f*** away from me!” followed by the thud of fist striking flesh. Turning back, I saw a youngish man with slick-backed black hair and wearing a business suit pummeling the homeless man’s face. I took a step toward them. And then? I did nothing. I watched the businessman strike twice more, wipe the back of his hand on his pants, then walk away, shoulders squared, to his car. I took another step toward the homeless man. He turned to face me. His eyes showed he felt nothing. I didn’t say a word. I went home.
If I had to do it again, I would not have committed this violence by inaction and by silence. I would have stepped between, and I would have said to the man perpetrating the direct violence, “If you want to hit someone, at least hit someone who will hit you back.”
There is violence by lying.
A few pages ago I mentioned that journalist Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for his role in fomenting the Nazi Holocaust. Here is what one of the prosecutors said about him:
“It may be that this defendant is less directly involved in the physical commission of crimes against Jews. The submission of the prosecution is that his crime is no less the worse for that reason. No government in the world . . . could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of mass extermination without having a people who would back them and support them. It was to the task of educating people, producing murderers, educating and poisoning them with hate, that Streicher set himself. In the early days he was preaching persecution. As persecution took place he preached extermination and annihilation. . . . [T]hese crimes . . . could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him. Without him, the Kaltenbrunners, the Himmlers . . . would have had nobody to carry out their orders.”
The same is true of course today for the role of the corporate press in atrocities committed by governments and corporations, insofar as here is a meaningful difference.
Derrick Jensen is a long time environmental campaigner, activist, writer and founding member of Deep Green Resistance. He has published Endgame, The Culture of Make Believe, A Language Older than Words, and many other books.
Featured image: U.S.-made CS gas (“tear gas”) canister used against civilians during the 2011 uprising in Bahrain. Photo by Mohamed CJ, CC BY SA 3.0.
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